masterwordsmith-unplugged

It is not easy to be a mom and an educator.

It is even more difficult to be an educator and a mom of a musician.

It is extremely difficult to be an educator who is also a musician and a mom of a musician who is also an educator!!! :-)

Many of you may be aware that my older son is a musician but not many may know he is also a teacher at an international school. As such, the two of us sometimes face tricky situations in that we have to be fully aware that what we do is not against norms, values or laws.

Last week when he was home for Christmas, my sons and I had lots of musical moments. Then his friends came by and we all had more musical moments. And then they wanted to take it a notch or two higher....to do street performances at the heritage enclave of Penang.

Of course I was most supportive but I told them - wait wait wait. Let me Google to see if busking is against the law in Malaysia and when I confirmed it was perfectly legit, I gave them my blessings and helped them along the way.

This is Joshua, my son's old friend from secondary school. Joshua is a valedictorian of his uni, has a first class honours degree in engineering and is working with an American MNC in Penang.



The son of a pastor, Joshua also plays the guitar and was in the PFS school band.



This is Ti How, also an engineer and is Joshua's colleague.


The first session was on Christmas Eve and they started at Armenian Street in front of one of those famous wall murals. CLICK HERE for a short clip.



Thereafter, we headed to Khoo Kongsi and I went to talk to the management and they very kindly gave us their permission. Here's one of the shots I took of them via Instagram.


The crowd at both places seemed to love their rendition of Gangnam Style which you can WATCH HERE. 

They went to the same places on Christmas Day but before they left, they did a reggae arrangement of Gloria Gaynor's I WILL SURVIVE and a medley of other songs which you can watch AT THIS LINK.



I did a collage of the previous day's performance and posted it in Facebook.


For sure, music has always drawn my family together, even for my sons' friends. Truly, the boys and I had so much fun. My role was just to be part of the crowd, sing and react spontaneously and record/snap pics whenever possible. Fortunately, I met two guys from KL, one of who is Boon Ping ...both of them kindly agreed to take some pics of my son and his friends and sent them to me when they returned to KL. Thank you so much, Boon Ping!

And if you have not watched my son's cover version of Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites Violin Dubstep Cover Freestyle, you can do so AT THIS LINK. 

*Just a hint...my son likes to add one or two bars of melodies from other songs in whtaever song he plays....see if you can detect which song is being played in each one...check out other videos at my channel. A good example is their rendition of WE WILL ROCK YOU at this link. Somewhere in the song, you can hear a phrase or two from 1:22...can anyone hear that line and tell me the title of that song which my son played followed by an ad lib impromptu improvised section before they returned to the chorus?

This is a delayed post because we spent the whole evening trying to calm down Tiger who has a separation anxiety syndrome. Fortunately for me, my cousin in US is a team-member in a dog day care centre and understands dog temperaments very well. So, Tiger is sleeping with Nick...

Good night, everyone. It has been one long but exciting evening....